


Amazing Grace, Part Four

by itstonedme



Series: Amazing Grace [4]
Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: AU, Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-03
Updated: 2009-08-03
Packaged: 2017-11-14 22:42:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/520272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itstonedme/pseuds/itstonedme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Depression-era in the U.S. southeast.  A migrant comes upon a teenage boy and his father living in rural Tennessee.  Originally posted in August 2009 on LJ <a href="http://itstonedme.livejournal.com/23558.html">here</a> with reader comments.</p>
<p>Disclaimer: A work of fiction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Amazing Grace, Part Four

By the next morning, the fourth day since he'd shown up on the road, Orlando felt he was sufficiently acquainted with Elijah to ask if everything was alright, given the puffiness and hollowness that appeared around his young host's eyes with each dawn. Orlando knew what he was seeing: sadness bordering on grief. He didn't know Elijah's story; he didn't know what might or might not be taking place each night in that house, but it was easy enough for Orlando's mind to gravitate in a troubling direction. 

"How'd you sleep, Elijah? You're looking a little tired, mate."

"Seen better nights," Elijah replied quietly, averting his eyes as he handed Orlando his plate. There seemed no point in denying what must be obvious.

"Doesn't keep you from making the world's best breakfasts, though, for which I'm indebted." 

Elijah smiled a little at that, and Orlando was satisfied that his observation had now been put to words.

*

By mid-afternoon, a forty foot beech had been brought down, and the system the three of them had developed over the previous two days hastened their progress. Orlando and Elijah broke beneath the shade of a mature black walnut, its considerable girth supporting their backs as they sat at right angles. 

"Can I ask you something?" Elijah plucked a grass reed and tongued the sun-baked stem between the gap in his front teeth. 

"Absolutely. Ask away."

"You ever wonder what your life would have been like if you was born different?" He worked the long, flat blade of the grass stalk in and around his sun-browned knuckles.

"Different how?"

"I dunno. Like, rich, maybe." A second blade joined the first.

"Money isn't all it's cracked up to be." Orlando tipped his head back against the furrowed bark, the sun dappling through his eyelids. He allowed the weight of his cliche to settle around them, hoping that an impoverished rural urchin like Elijah would recognize it for what it was and tell him to shut his ass. When it didn't come, he leaned towards Elijah and dug his elbow into the young man's arm. "Sure as hell beats darning one's own underclothes, though." 

Elijah grabbed the stem from his teeth and leaned in, giggling his endearing bray. "Beats _making_ your own underwear!" 

"You make your underclothes?" Orlando asked, incredulous.

"Not for every day," Elijah replied as if that explained it, and Orlando quickly caught himself before he glanced at Elijah's crotch. "Don't own a pair of those fancy things you got hanging on the line, all skimpy and buttonless."

Orlando's eyes crinkled; he was enjoying this playful side of his young host. "So humor me, Elijah. What are yours -- when you decide to wear them -- made of?"

"Flour sacks, mostly." Elijah ducked his head, then looked at Orlando squarely, grinning. "They're soft, see."

Orlando crowed. "So, you wear White Lily on your lilywhite buttocks?" He snorted, tickled by his own cleverness.

Elijah made a face. "Very funny. Yes." He didn't really get the gist of what buttocks were all about but figured he understood closely enough. He was actually delighted to be the cause of someone's good humour, especially Orlando's, given how rare such an opportunity was. "I suppose this is what you'd call 'laughing _with_ '?" 

Sometimes Elijah's quickness and sass took Orlando by pleasant surprise. 

Orlando sighed audibly, a womanly noise that made both of them snort in turn. "Sorry," Orlando grinned, wiping his eyes, the laughter hitching as he tried to collect himself. "I tease, Elijah, but the truth of it is that I could use your sewing skills, I really could."

They settled once more against the tree, the infectiousness of their laughter trading back and forth for a bit as it ebbed. 

"But," Elijah said eventually, "what if you -- well, maybe not you -- but what if someone was born different?" He fidgeted with the long grass growing beside his hip. "I mean, what if someone was born wrong?"

Orlando glanced once more at Elijah, at the perfect profile, its eyelashes so long they feathered the lenses with each pass. _What is going on in that head?_ he wondered. 

"What do you mean, 'wrong'?" Orlando asked quietly. "Like, being simple-minded or afflicted with something? Is that what you mean?"

Elijah shook his head. "No, I don't mean that," he whispered, not trusting his voice. "I mean, like, sinful. Like a gangster or a killer or something."

Orlando's attention zoomed tightly onto the young man beside him. "Are you trying to tell me something, Elijah?" 

Elijah's cheeks had flushed, and he turned to Orlando, a little jittery and uneasy. A breath gusted from his lips as he took in Orlando's serious, focussed expression, and he laughed nervously. "I ain't done killed no one!" he laughed. "Oh jeez, it sounded like that, didn't it."

Orlando smiled broadly and raised one eyebrow. 

"Nor my pa, don't think nothing bad there," Elijah added quickly. He was still antsy, though, and plucked at more of the grass. Glancing skittishly at Orlando, he said, "People can be born bad, though, don't you think?"

Orlando stared at him before slowly shaking his head. "No," he replied. "That's not possible."

Elijah looked at him and blinked, their gazes holding.

"I believe that people become something sinful because of what they do or what happens to them, not by how they come into the world," Orlando said. 

If Elijah could have become any more still than he was at that moment, Orlando didn’t think it would have been possible.

“Even then," Orlando added quietly, "I think that sometimes people do things that others see as wrong – that even they themselves consider as wrong – through no fault of their own. Sometimes they have to do things to survive or to stay safe.” He looked closely into Elijah’s fathomless eyes, but the young man’s expression gave no insight, no invitation.

Elijah eventually nodded his acceptance of that statement, but in his heart, it only confirmed what he already knew.

*

The washing up had been completed, the pigs fed, eggs had been collected for breakfast and Orlando had pulled his harmonica from his pack. Next to him, on the porch, the old man had whittled his beechwood switch down to a matchstick, and beyond him, against the far wall by the door, Elijah sat curling his fingers through the dog's patchy hair, idly feeling for burrs while he listened to the music.

"What'd that be called?" the old man asked Orlando once the song had ended. "It don't sound like any kind of music I heard before."

Orlando smiled, tapping the harmonica against his thigh to clear the moisture. "That tune has a French name. It was popular in the place where I'm from."

"La-di-da," the old man chuckled, but his playful intent was long unpracticed and a trace of bitter ridicule crept through. Orlando let it ride for what it was. "And where'd that be?" the old man asked. Elijah stilled his movement to listen.

"South of England. Beautiful countryside but nothing like America."

"How's that?" the old man asked.

"Back home, it's all tamed, all the fields are cleared of stone and all the stone in ordered walls, hedgerows along the roads, wild bougainvillea and wisteria draping the woods in the spring. They've been working and shaping that country for two thousand years. Everything is in its place and everything is nearby, in comparison. But America," and Orlando's voice went soft with a reverence reserved for the immigrant, his eyes sweeping all they beheld from left to right, "America is big and wild and free. There's a lot of space, there's a lot of room for all kinds of people to set up and spread out."

The old man spat past the edge of the porch and Elijah's bones shrank within his skin towards the wall. 

"That's bullshit, respecting you and all," the old man said sourly. "A man can set up and spread out on what he signed a deed to own, but if he has no money, there ain't nothing he can do to hold on to any of it."

Orlando assumed that this was a fact from the old man's past and raised his harp to show no affront taken. 

Elijah tried to hear above his racing heart. He couldn't believe Orlando wasn't annoyed or apologetic. 

"We wasn't always thus," the old man said. "There was a time we lived out in Iowa on a small but nice spread that had once belonged to Elijah's ma's people and their people before that. Had in-laws with their parcels near by. But after the war, things started to go downhill in farming, and we needed to take a mortgage out on the place just to keep it going, and then that damn flu come along..."

Orlando respected the silence that followed, pregnant with untold memories.

"And those god cursed banks foreclosed on us, and here we be, me and my boy, patching pots and eating pigeons."

"Bastards," Orlando murmured, ever the gracious guest.

For a time, they listened as evening birds colored the sunset. 

"Maybe you know this one," Orlando offered, and he began to blow a more spirited tune.

The old man laid his blade across his thigh, then smiled, turning towards Orlando. His hand began to slap softly against his leg. "Don't know the song," he grinned over the blowing, "but I sure as hell know the music," and he let out a yip that made Elijah jump. 

With his eyes, Orlando smiled over at him and winked.

* 

"Do you have any interest in hearing a little Poe this evening?" Orlando asked Elijah after the old man had taken his leave to work in the barn for a while. "That is, if you're not too tired."

"I ain't too tired," Elijah rushed, immediately embarrassed by how enthusiastic he sounded. "But we wouldn't be able to burn kerosene for reading," he added.

"That's alright. I'll ask your father if we can light a small fire in the pit. I don't think he will refuse us an hour's reading tonight." 

* 

The old man was lighting the mantle of the lamp when Orlando came into the barn. 

"I've got a book Elijah's interested in hearing. Would you mind if we lit a fire to read by?"

The old man played with the fuel feed as the flame caught in a soft explosion, brightening the walls of the barn like a small star. He turned the tap, softening the glow and the sound. Several of the hens clucked softly.

"He knows how to read."

"And very well, I hear."

"What kind of book?"

"Ghost stories, most of them. Tales for a night by the fire. You'd be welcome."

The old man huffed out a smile. "No, you two boys go ahead."

"I'll see you in the morning," Orlando nodded. 

He'd taken no more than two steps when the father said Elijah's name and stopped, waiting for Orlando to turn around. "Elijah," he repeated, "seems mighty taken with your being here, from what I can see."

"You've raised a fine young man, and he's been pleasant company."

The father nodded; like most conversational openings given him, the matter of Elijah's upbringing appeared to warrant no comment. "He don't mix with many folk since he's been out of school," the old man went on. "We don't partake much in the church, neither, so he's not accustomed to meeting up with others." The old man cleared his throat. "He might seem a mite...too friendly as a result. Might say things oddly."

The mere suggestion boggled Orlando.

"He's been very circumspect, actually," Orlando replied before realizing it wasn't understood. "Elijah has been very polite, not at all bothersome. I hope he can say the same about me." He offered a smile but inside, he roiled to hear of Elijah being isolated in these backhills. So many of the tumblers of their afternoon conversation began to click into place. 

The old man reached into his hip pocket for the tobacco pouch. "You boys enjoy your book reading."

*

"So he went crazy?" Elijah whispered in the darkness. The night was very still; the smoke and embers sailed straight upwards. 

Orlando sat up, stretching his back. He had seated himself crosslegged before the fire, the opened pages of the book flat between his knees, hunched forward with a wary eye to the occasional spits and crackles as the wood burst. A cut of log had been rolled over for Elijah to recline against.

Orlando hadn't thought that Elijah would make much sense of the poem, given its level of language and obscure allusions, so he was pleasantly surprised by the question. "Yes," he said in a low voice, matching the mood of the night. "He was bereft of someone he loved, and this insistent, devilish bird intruded into his grief and would not let him escape it. So yes, he did go mad."

"I can see that," Elijah observed quietly.

They were silent for a while, each staring into the flames.

"What I always have found interesting," Orlando continued, "is why he would ask the things he asked when he knew he'd get the same answer. It was as if he wished to encourage or will his own madness." 

"Maybe it was better than being sad," Elijah said.

Orlando turned to him; firelight danced on the glass of Elijah's lenses, obscuring his eyes. "Maybe so," Orlando said, then looked back to the fire. 

Out in the woods and fields, the night bugs fiercely called out, and the hum of the lathe carried from the barn.

"May I ask what happened to your mom?" Orlando said after a while. "Tell me to shut it if you'd rather not say."

"No, it's all right," Elijah said, but his voice had dropped so low that Orlando found himself leaning in. "She died during the Spanish flu that my pa talked of. I don't remember her; I was three years old. We was living in Iowa then."

"How long after that before you and your dad moved here?"

Elijah glanced towards the barn, where the lathe still whirred. "Maybe another five years while he tried to hang onto the farm. He was from these parts, you see, had kin around, so when everything was lost, we come out." 

Orlando let that sentence hang for a moment.

"My pa, my sister, and me." 

Orlando glanced up, and Elijah's eyes skittered from his face to the barn and back.

"She was two years older 'n me. She's married now, lives down near Etowah...well, it don't matter where, she's married, got a boychild."

"You ever see her?" 

"No. No cause." 

_You dig a little, you unearth a world of hurt,_ Orlando thought. "Your other people nearby?" he asked. 

"Somewhere's, but we don't see them neither." Elijah's voice dropped impossibly lower. "There was words." He nodded towards the barn.

Orlando nodded his understanding.

"You?" Elijah asked.

"Vermin, the lot. The less said, the better. I was an only child."

They sat once more in the stillness, listening to the sounds around them. Soon, a halo of lamplight spilled onto the dirt between the barn and house as Elijah's father walked towards the back porch.

"I suppose we best turn in," Elijah said, sitting forward, then jumping to his feet. "Fire'll take care of itself." He waited for Orlando to join him. "Thank you for reading to me," he said. "I wish I had your way with the words." 

"Tomorrow night, you read to me," Orlando smiled.


End file.
